Document Management

Document management controls the life cycle of documents in your organization — how they are created, reviewed, published, and consumed, and how they are ultimately disposed of or retained. Although the term "management" implies top-down control of information, an effective document management system should reflect the culture of the organization using it. The tools you use for document management should be flexible, allowing you to tightly control documents' life cycles if that fits your enterprise's culture and goals, but also letting you implement a more loosely structured system if that better suits your enterprise. A well-designed document management system promotes finding and sharing information easily. It organizes content in a logical way, and makes it easy to standardize content creation and presentation across an enterprise. It promotes knowledge management and information mining. It helps your organization meet its legal responsibilities. It provides features at each stage of a document's life cycle, from template creation to document authoring, reviewing, publishing, auditing, and ultimately destroying or archiving.

The elements of a document management system

An effective solution specifies: